Veterans Digital Transformation Breakfast

Mr. Dominic Cussatt has served as Acting Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology and Chief Information Officer since January 20, 2021. Mr. Cussatt oversees the entire IT Program for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), a Fortune 10 sized agency servicing 22M US veterans with over $200B in annual budget and over 350,000 government staff. The VA IT program includes 24/7 IT operations spread across every US state and several overseas territories supporting 145 Hospitals and 1231 Outpatient Facilities (making VA the largest health care organization in the US), 56 Regional Benefits Offices, and 135 Veteran Cemeteries. He oversees VA’s $4B  annual IT budget and the activities of over 10,000 IT employees and contractors performing Account Management, Strategic Sourcing, IT Development and Operations, Information Security, IT Resource Management, Quality Assurance, and Performance and Risk Management. In his previous role as VA Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Mr. Cussatt oversaw the VA’s Enterprise Cybersecurity Program ensuring secure and reliable operation of VA’s IT infrastructure. Mr. Cussatt has over 25 years of public and private sector IT experience, and was with the US Department of Defence (DoD) CIO’s office for 12 years prior to VA. During his tenure as DoD Deputy CISO for Cybersecurity Policy and Strategy, he was also the Director of the DoD International Cybersecurity Program. In 2014, he was selected by the 28 NATO nations as the National Co-Chair of the NATO Information Assurance/Cyber Defense Capability Panel, the sole source of cybersecurity policy for the NATO Alliance. He also served over 3 years as DoD Tri-Chair for the Committee on National Security Systems (CNSS) Subcommittee, a national forum for US National Security System policy which published dozens of Federal cybersecurity policies under his tenure. Since 2007, Mr. Cussatt has been a member of the US Federal Government’s Joint Task Force Transformation Initiative, a US Civil/Defense/Intelligence partnership developing minimum Federal IT standards. The Initiative successfully unified the US Federal Government’s disparate cybersecurity standards by publishing 5 National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) special publications, including the NIST security control catalog and the NIST Risk Management Framework. He was twice awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defence (OSD) Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service (in 2014 & 2016), the OSD’s highest level career medaled award.

Charles Worthington is a software developer and product designer who has been helping the government adopt modern digital service delivery best practices since 2013. He currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer for the Office of Information and Technology at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), where he leads efforts to improve the experience Veterans have when interacting with VA online as well as help OIT adopt modern DevSecOps best practices. Since joining the Department, he has guided VA’s Digital Transformation Strategy. His efforts include supporting VA’s adoption of commercial cloud infrastructure, spearheading enhancements to the agency’s online appointment scheduling tools, and supporting the transformation of VA.gov into a modern customer-facing platform. Prior to joining VA, Charles built products for private sector clients and was a strategy consultant in the tech & telecom sectors. Charles holds a B.A. from Harvard University.